Saturday, May 7, 2016

Bubble parenting

In providing a healthy environment where children can grow and develop it's important to children's development that parents not teach a child the only safe place for them is at home and that anytime they enter the world, particularly without a parent, that something BAD will happen to them because the world is an unsafe place.

It's the responsibility of the parents to teach their children about the world and how to navigate and survive it. Parents need to tell children about things and people in the world that will harm them and what to do when they encounter them. If parent's don't, the world will teach them and in ways more unpleasant and harsher than the parent would.

I call this type of parenting bubble parenting because the parent thinks if they raise their children in a bubble and protect them from all the things in the world that would harm them, that those things won't affect their children. However, bad parts of the world do affect all children and if parents don't teach their children how to handle these situations, they don't know how to handle them and can get themselves into a lot of trouble.

One of two things can happen to the relationship of parents and children when parents are bubble parenting. One, the child cuts the strings on their own and enters the world learning how to navigate it on their own and possibly puts conditions on their relationship with their parents or two, these children are the children who as adults are living at home with their parents because they've been taught the only safe place in the world for them is at home with their parents.

Bubble parenting affects a child's self-esteem because they learn to be dependent on their parents all of their lives and never develop the self-esteem to embark on their own and try new things because of their fear of failure of whatever BAD thing is out there waiting for them. So parents please, don't raise your children in a bubble. Teach them the things about the world they need to know to live in it and encourage them and teach them how to be people who give back to the world they live in.